Referring to FIG. 2A, a distributed systems management environment 20 contains numerous managed devices 21, each with an agent process 25, and at least one management station 22 running a manager process 254. The SNMP protocol 24 allows the manager 254 and agent process 25 to exchange management information. The manager 254 sends messages to the agent process 25 on the managed devices 21 to request information or modify parameters. The agent process 25 replies to the message from the manager 254. The agent process 25 can also initiate communication with the manager 254 via SNMP traps, such as to notify the manager 254 of important events that agent 25 has been configured to monitor.
SNMP is an open Internet standard. SNMP defines a protocol for exchanging management information, a data model, and a set of semantics for the management information. SNMP defines a specification for a management information base, or MIB, using the ASN.1 syntax.